Introduction to Sally

by Elizabeth Von Arnim

This seemed to Jocelyn fantastic.

‘Wait here, will you?’ he said, hurrying her into the garage and depositing her like a parcel in the remotest corner. ‘Don’t move, will you, till I fetch you——’

And he left her there, safe as far as he could see, and went back to the shrieking car.

She sat down thankfully on a pile of empty petrol cans. If only she could be left there for a good long while, if only she could spend the rest of the day there.... ‘Don’t move,’ Usband had said; as though she wanted to! Except that she was very hungry, really hungry now that her fears were over, for she had had no dinner yet, and it was two o’clock, how happy would she have been to stay there without moving for the rest of the afternoon. The quiet corner, away from danger, away from having to guess what she ought to say to Usband, and away from the look he gave her when she had said it, seemed almost perfect. It would have been quite perfect if there had been anything to eat.

And as if in answer to her wish, the little door into a shed at the back opened, and in walked a youth, smudged and pasty-looking as those look who work much in garages, bearing in his hand a basin tied up in a crimson handkerchief.

This was young Mr. Soper, the most promising of the mechanics employed at the garage, who daily ate his dinner in that corner. There he could sit on the pile of empty petrol cans, out of sight and yet within earshot should his services suddenly be called for; and on this particular day, his firm having been by chance extra busy all the morning, he had gone later than usual into the private shed at the back to fetch the basin of food left there for him by his landlady’s little son, so that when Jocelyn took Sally into the corner it was empty, because Mr. Soper, instead of being in the middle of his dinner as he would have been on other days, was in the act of collecting it in the shed.

‘Beg pardon, Miss,’ he said, staring at Sally, his mouth dropping open. ‘Beg pardon, I’m sure, Miss——’

And he put his arm quickly back round the door he had just come through and whipped out a chair. ‘Won’t you—won’t you sit more comfortable, Miss?’

‘Don’t mind if I do,’ said Sally, getting up and smiling politely.

Mr. Soper’s pasty face became bright red at that smile. He proceeded to dust the seat of the chair by rubbing the bottom of his handkerchiefed basin up and down it, and then stood staring at the young lady, the basin dangling sideways in his hand, held carelessly by the knotted corners of its handkerchief, and some of its gravy accordingly dribbling out.